Tuesday, 19 July 2016

Owen Smith is "Normal". A normal Red Tory.

Oh dear. With nominations for the next Labour leader set to open in a matter of hours, now is not the best time for either leadership hopeful to find themselves compared to Andrea Leadsom got herself into this month when she talked about her family, Which was seen as an attack her the rival candidate Theresa May who is childless.

Owen Smith however may have made a bigger gaffe thanks to an interview he gave to Sky News.

In the interview, Smith appears to claim that he is normal because he has a wife and children:

Given that his leadership rival Angela Eagle is a lesbian with no children, his comments are not going down well with liberal Labour supporters. Many have taken his words to show prejudice towards the childless as well as the LGBT community.

While it’s unlikely Smith meant to suggest that Eagle is not ‘normal’, it an unfortunate statement to say the least

has adopted the PR man’s typical contempt for the public, who are not as stupid as he seems to think. There is no evidence whatsoever that Smith is a left winger. There is every evidence that he is another New Labour unprincipled and immoral careerist, adopting a left wing pose that he thinks will win him votes.

The sort of Labour Poltician who says

“I marched with the miners at Maerdy Colliery and I will never forget the pride I felt at seeing men and women, old and young, come together to fight for their neighbours, their jobs and hope for the next generation.“This sense of community, solidarity and passion for justice remain at the heart of my politics.“This is why I am Labour right to my fingertips. I’m not interested in machine politicking and Westminster parlour games, but rooted politics – that’s about making a real and lasting difference to people’s lives.

But distances himself from his youthful support for CND passing it off as the foibles of youth

He said he abandoned his commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament 15 years ago as he realised

"we need to retain it until we can use it as a bargaining chip to get everybody to get rid of their nuclear weapons"."I will vote to renew Trident."I'm a multilateralist and I believe that the world has actually got more volatile and more insecure over the last few years."I want a world without nuclear weapons altogether, but I don't believe that we hasten that by divesting."

The former shadow work and pensions secretary also criticised Mr Corbyn for saying that if he became Prime Minister he would not push the nuclear button

In other words Mr Normal would order the deaths of thousands if not millions of innocent people.

And last night he marched into the YES lobbies with the Tories to renew Trident

Labour sources said they believe 138 Labour MPs voted for the motion, 48 against, with 45 not present..

I wonder how many of the 136 who voted thus and the 45 who abstained (How can you not have a view?) still have a CND badge in their sock draw.

He's normal for a Labour MP who extols the Welsh Rugby and Football teams but who then refers to Wales as a "Region" and as disdain for those who want more for Wales than a Third Rate Assembly.

We need politicians who are nit Normal but who prepared to think differently to the cosy Consensus pf Westminster Even if Jeremy Corbyn was to win the Leadership contest most of the Parliamentary Labour Party will be Normal in that they wi;l be indistinguishable from the Tories on the Government benches.